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tcdent • today at 8:24 PM • 3 replies • view on HN

Furthermore, why is it assumed that as power demand and capacity rises, that prices would rise? In every other market prices drop at scale.


Replies

toast0 • today at 9:01 PM

> In every other market prices drop at scale.

Markets based on supply and demand all work like this. Increased demand results in the market price increasing.

Electricity demand eventually becomes fuel demand, which has the same thing: more demand results in increased prices for fuel. Since fuels are broadly substitutable in electricity generation, all fuels increase in price when there's (significant) additional demand for electricity and that tends to increase prices of everything with a significant energy component.

ssl-3 • today at 9:11 PM

When demand increases and supply remains static, prices go up.

Supply capacity improvements are incentivized by this price increase.

(If the incentive to improve supply capacity were present at the current price level, then those improvements would already be underway regardless of whether the world had ever seen a datacenter or not.)

SamBam • today at 8:25 PM

Because data centers don't operate in the free market, they work on incentives and public funds given by cities and states.